1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cooling of electronic packages and more particularly to cooling of electronic components used in a computing system environment.
2. Description of Background
The industry trend has been to continuously increase the number of electronic components inside computing systems environments. A computing system environment can simply comprise of a simple personal computer or be a complex network of large computers in processing communication with one another. While increasing the components inside a simple computing system environment does create some challenges, however, such an increase create many problems in computing system environments that include large computer complexes. In such instances many seemingly isolated issues affect one another, and have to be resolved in consideration with one another. This is particularly challenging in environments where the computers in the network are either packaged in a single assembly or housed and stored in close proximity.
One such particular challenge when designing any computing system environment is the issue of heat dissipation. Heat dissipation if unresolved, can result in electronic and mechanical failures that will affect overall system performance, no matter what the size of the environment. As can be easily understood, the heat dissipation increases as the packaging density increases. In larger computing systems environments, however, not only the number of heat generating electronic components are much larger than that of smaller environments, but thermal management solutions must be provided that take other needs of the system environment into consideration. Furthermore, improper heat dissipation can create a variety of other seemingly unrelated problems ranging from dynamic loading problems affecting structural rigidity of the computing system environment, to cost prohibitive solutions to provide proper air conditioning to customer sites where such computing system environments are being stored.
In some computing environments, heat dissipation issues are addressed by moving air over and at times through electronic devices and components that are to be cooled. In many instances, to properly cool an electronic device by moving air over and thru it, a thermal duct is used. In the prior art currently being used, the thermal duct is often sealed to the device. Unfortunately, in many instances, especially when servicing or installation of new components is involved, the thermal duct must be removed to access the components that are underneath it. This creates difficulties, especially in instances where the removal of the duct has to be repeated with some frequency. Consequently, a system and method is needed that allows for easy removal and re-installation of thermal ducts which are necessary in some applications.